Rehoboth Beach or Washington DC?

Rehoboth is built around its beach. The whole town faces a broad strip of pale sand with lifeguards and moderate surf. Quieter stretches lie north at Cape Henlopen and south at Delaware Seashore State Park, and in July and August the water is warm enough for a long swim.

Washington's rivers are for paddling, not swimming, and its nearest sand, on the Chesapeake around Annapolis, is small and brackish. The Atlantic shore it lacks is the Delaware coast where Rehoboth lies, about three hours' drive away, so for most visitors to Washington a swim means the hotel pool.

Rehoboth eats better than its size suggests. There are chef-led restaurants along Rehoboth Avenue, steamed crabs, raw bars and good Delaware craft beer. The weak points are cheap meals, which mostly mean pizza and boardwalk snacks, and a food scene that shrinks once summer ends.

Washington has far more choice. It has Ethiopian cooking in Shaw and U Street, pupusas in Columbia Heights and the half-smoke, its one local dish. You can graze at Eastern Market and Union Market or book a serious tasting menu. The range covers cuisines and budgets a resort cannot match, though both share the Chesapeake crab season.

Culture in Rehoboth is a side note to the beach. There are cottages from its Methodist camp-meeting days, the Rehoboth Art League in its Henlopen Acres garden and a small museum house. Visitors who want history usually drive to Lewes or to the wartime towers at Cape Henlopen.

Washington is in another league. The Smithsonian museums along the Mall, the National Gallery, the Capitol, the memorials and the Library of Congress can fill a week, and nearly all of it is free to enter.

Rehoboth's evenings are smaller and seasonal, but they have real character. It has piano lounges, drag nights and a long-standing LGBTQ bar scene around Baltimore Avenue, and Dewey Beach's loud deck bars are a couple of miles south. Out of summer, all that shrinks to a few quiet bars.

Washington offers the fuller night out all year round. There are cocktail bars and rooftops on 14th and U Streets, late drinking in Adams Morgan, dive bars on H Street and a few clubs with touring DJs. Bars are busiest from Thursday to Saturday and stay open well past midnight at weekends, long after Rehoboth has gone quiet.

Rehoboth's outdoors is flat and gentle. It is built around the dunes, pine woods and salt marsh of Cape Henlopen, kayaking on the inland bays, dolphins offshore and an easy cycle trail through the wetland to Lewes.

Washington has more variety within reach. Rock Creek Park's wooded valley runs through the city, the C&O Canal towpath follows the Potomac, and Great Falls has a rocky gorge with climbing and whitewater. Further out are the ridge hikes of Shenandoah, which give a kind of outdoor day the Delaware coast cannot.

From Rehoboth, the outings are pleasant and coastal. Lewes is ten minutes away, the ferry crosses Delaware Bay to the Victorian streets of Cape May, and Ocean City has a brasher boardwalk. Every one of them needs a car.

Washington sits in a region dense with history. Alexandria is a short Metro ride away, Mount Vernon is a little further south, and Baltimore and Philadelphia are easy by train. Annapolis and the battlefields of Gettysburg, Antietam and Harpers Ferry are each a drive of an hour or two.

Both work well with children, in different ways. Rehoboth is the simple seaside version. It has lifeguarded beaches near the rental houses, a small boardwalk amusement park with gentle rides, mini-golf, a water park and calm bay water at Cape Henlopen, all in a compact town. Out of season, though, there is little to do.

Washington is the learning version, with dinosaurs, rockets and the free National Zoo, and it works all year, best in spring and autumn. The drawbacks are long walks across a hot, exposed Mall and no beach or theme park nearby.

Rehoboth is easy on foot and by bike within its flat grid, and a seasonal trolley runs to Dewey Beach and the outlets. Getting there and going further is the hard part: there is no train, the highway clogs on summer weekends and central parking is scarce.

Once you have arrived, Washington is far easier. The Metro reaches most sights, Alexandria and the airport, and every station has lifts. Bike-share docks line the riverside paths, so you only need a car for the countryside.

Rehoboth's main draw is the outlet centres along the highway, helped by Delaware's lack of sales tax. Rehoboth Avenue adds independent boutiques, galleries and bookshops, but it is all resort casual, with nothing at the luxury end.

Washington has more choice. Georgetown's brick streets have boutiques and antique shops, CityCenterDC has a cluster of luxury labels, and Eastern Market has weekend craft stalls. The museum shops are good for books and prints.

Both are expensive places to stay, but the pattern differs. Rehoboth's prices follow the season: beach rooms and rental houses are dear in summer and far cheaper in spring and autumn. The beach itself is free.

Washington stays costly all year, with restaurants priced for expense accounts and tipping on top. Against that, its sightseeing is almost all free, from the Smithsonian to the zoo, and staying across the river in Arlington can cut the cost of a room.

Rehoboth's stage is small and mostly seasonal. There are free bandstand concerts on summer evenings, a local company staging musicals and cabaret, an autumn film festival and piano acts in the bars. For bigger touring shows you drive further south.

Washington is a real theatre city, with Arena Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Ford's Theatre and the Folger's playhouse. The National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera give it a proper classical season, and the restored U Street theatres and Wolf Trap's summer lawn concerts bring in big touring acts.

Neither place has a spa culture, and both rely on hotel spas and yoga studios. Rehoboth has the edge for rest because of its pace. In June, in September and on autumn weekends the boardwalk empties and days slow to walks and bike rides under the pines, though high summer is noisy.

Washington runs to the working rhythm of a government town, so you have to look for calm: an early walk around the Tidal Basin, or a bench in the Dumbarton Oaks gardens or the National Arboretum.